Date:

Location:

Henry Morre, 4th flr.

Level:

Intermediate

Prerequisites

Participants should have some experience of designing and building software.

Tutorial: Simple sketches for diagramming your software architecture

Agility is about moving fast and this requires good communication. A consistent, shared vision is essential in order for teams to push in the same direction, but it's surprising that many teams struggle to effectively communicate the architecture of the software they are building. As an industry we do have the Unified Modeling Language (UML), yet many people favour informal boxes and lines sketches instead. The problem is that such diagrams rarely make any sense, usually need a narrative to accompany them and ultimately slow the team down. Although we can argue whether UML offers an effective way to communicate software architecture, that's often irrelevant because many teams have already thrown out UML or simply don't know it. Abandoning UML is one thing but, in the race for agility, many software development teams have lost the ability to communicate visually too.

This hands-on session is aimed at those involved in the software development process and is about improving communication. You'll see some patterns and anti-patterns related to "boxes and lines" diagrams, and you'll learn some lightweight techniques for communicating software architecture using simple sketches and my C4 software architecture model.

Speaker: Simon Brown

Author of “Software Architecture for Developers”

Simon is an independent consultant and helps organisations to build better software by adopting a lightweight, pragmatic approach to software architecture. He is the creator of the C4 software architecture model and the author of "Software Architecture for Developers" - a developer-friendly guide to software architecture, technical leadership and the balance with agility. Simon regularly speaks at software development conferences around the world and, in 2013, he won the IEEE Software sponsored SATURN 2013 "Architecture in Practice" Presentation Award for his presentation about the conflict between agile and architecture. Simon lives in Jersey (the largest of the Channel Islands) and his client list spans over 20 countries, including organisations ranging from small technology startups through to global household names. He still codes too.